Alicia's Bible Blog
Leviticus 13:8. "[A]nd the priest shall make an examination, and if the eruption has spread in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean, it is leprosy."
All of chapter 13 of Leviticus deals with instructions to the priests on how to diagnose leprosy. There was no cure, and the people were living in close quarters as they wandered through the desert, so it was very important to identify and separate the leper from the others. God's rules to the priests are very specific and detailed because He wanted to protect His people, but He did not want the people's fear of the disease to result in a panic that excluded people from the camp based on a false diagnosis or, worse yet, no diagnosis, just a fear of the "other."
As we have seen in recent years, we human beings are very prone to this behavior of panic and othering. If we are aware of a threat, or led to believe there is one, but do not have all the knowledge necessary to understand or deal with it, we tend to overreact and punish others due to our fear. When we start seeing other people as threats, it is a short jump to committing the most heinous crimes against them (see Nazi Germany, for example, and remember that the Jews were first labeled as disease carriers, before the worst of the atrocities set in). God knows this about us, so in Leviticus He instructed the priests with great specificity on what leprosy looks like, and how not to confuse it with other ailments. Knowing and trusting that God told the priests everything they needed to know and knowing there was a procedure in place to deal with leprosy alleviated that fear from the people and allowed the proper functioning of their society.
Upon the diagnosis of leprosy, the leper was to wear torn clothes, dwell outside the camp, and cry "unclean, unclean" when around others. (Leviticus 13:45-46) This is harsh, of course, but much more civilized than the people might have been to the lepers if God had not laid down these rules. Without these rules, one can easily see the people leaving all lepers, or anyone they thought could possibly a leper, completely behind to fend for themselves in the desert. God also gave instructions for the lepers to return to the priests if the disease abated. The priests could then declare the leper healed, and he could return to society. So God's method accomplished everything: it protected the people from the lepers; it protected the lepers, and others, from the people's panic; it kept order; it encouraged knowledge and compassion among the priests; and it acknowledged that the disease did not always last forever, and allowed for the healed leper's return to a society that had not treated him unjustly (which is very important so that there is not a class of people with a grudge against the society in which they live).
If we knew all of this from the time of Leviticus, why did we forget it in the 21st century and treat our fellow man, even people who had no sickness whatsoever, as threats and enemies to be excluded, shunned, and punished? I said earlier that God knows us well enough to know how we can overreact to threats, and that is why He proactively set up this system. Well, the devil also knows this about us, and he loves to get us to treat each other horribly (see, again, Nazi Germany). The further we are as a society from God, who always wants to protect His children, the more influence the devil has over us.
What we have been going through, and continue to go through, is a massive spiritual battle being played out in the material world. As a society, we have largely rejected God, and that makes us prey to anyone who wants to manipulate and control us. There are always those who want to manipulate and control the masses, and when we turn from the protection of our Father, we are sitting ducks for them. They exaggerate threats, get us fearful, and then lure us in with promises of care and safety. We, forgetting that only God knows what we truly need and how to truly care for us, run into their trap. That is what happened to us, that is what is still happening to us. The "othering" of our fellow human beings is at a fever pitch. The unborn; the elderly; the sick (and "those people" who are probably sick and not telling us!); those of different religions, races, and nationalities; the poor (and sometimes the rich); really, anyone we (or those who want to pit us against each other) deem to have an intolerable fault have all felt the pain of this, some have even died because of it.
This is the spirit of evil, and it is abounding in our world today. We see its fruits everywhere: in war, in violence, in addiction, in suicides, in depression and anxiety, in poverty. It will not end until we turn back to God. He is allowing it to continue so that we do. God will allow great evil to bring about great good, and the greatest of goods is for each and every one of us to be saved. He wants nothing more than that.
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